Fifty First Dates
by Sara Wolfe
Summary: They're going to finish that date if it kills them - and knowing Steve and Danny, it just might.
1. Stuck in the Middle with You

**Author's Note: **This fic originally started as a standalone prompt from the shoot_the_curl comm on LiveJournal, and spiraled into what promises to be a monstrosity with a few well-placed comments. In other words, I completely blame the folks at Archive of Our Own; this is all their fault.

**Stuck in the Middle With You**

_'Only in Hawaii,'_ Danny thought, as he ducked behind an overturned table to avoid the bullets flying overhead. _'Only in Hawaii-'_

Only in this pineapple-infested hellhole could he manage to get caught in the middle of a dispute between two gun-wielding idiots while minding his own business and doing absolutely nothing. Well, not nothing, he reflected. He had been trying to enjoy himself on a date. Had been enjoying himself a great deal, if he was being honest, at least up until the bullets had started flying.

He'd been surprised, pleasantly so, when Steve had asked him out to dinner last night. They'd been flirting, in their way, for months, but he'd never really expected it to go anywhere. Rachel hadn't been able to stop teasing him, and Grace had jumped wholeheartedly into helping him get ready for tonight. And things had been going well – until a couple of morons had both decided to hold up the same restaurant, and then had started shooting up the place to try and scare each other off.

His left arm burned where he'd been grazed by a bullet, and he had his free hand wrapped around the wound to stop the trickle of blood. Across the restaurant, a woman screamed as a glass shattered on the table over her head. Danny risked a quick glance around the edge of the table, jerking back when one of the shooters looked in his direction, praying that he hadn't been seen. He shot his companion a wordless look.

"Tell me you have a plan," he muttered, under his breath, and next to him, Steve nodded, a grimly serious look on his face.

"We take them out," he said, shortly, and Danny sighed in exasperation.

"I was hoping for a few more details than that," he said, impatiently.

"Okay," Steve replied, "I'll take the big one, and you get the little one. That's not a crack on your height," he added, hastily. "But, he's already bleeding, and this is a brand new shirt."

"You're all heart," Danny muttered. "All right, little guy it is. Give me your ankle piece." When Steve remained suspiciously silent, he prompted, "Steve, your gun?"

"Well, where's yours?" Steve demanded, and Danny blushed.

"It's a date," he muttered, sheepishly. "You don't bring guns on a date. But, you-" When Steve still stayed silent, Danny shot him an incredulous look. "You do have a gun, don't you?"

"Like you said," Steve shot back, "you don't bring guns on a date."

"I don't," Danny snapped, staring at him in disbelief. "Normal people don't. But, you're not normal. You're Super Seal, for god's sake; you carry grenades in my car. How can you not have a gun?"

"I was trying to be romantic," Steve retorted.

"Yeah, well, if your romance gets me killed-" Danny muttered. "All right, we go on three, got it?"

Steve nodded, shortly, tensing into a crouch on the balls of his feet. "One," he murmured, softly, "two-"

"Hey," Danny interrupted him, quickly. "Be careful, okay? I was hoping to go walking on the beach, later, and I don't want to spend what's left of this night in the hospital, watching you get patched up."

"Don't worry," Steve murmured, pulling him into a quick kiss. "Our night is long from over." He grinned impulsively at Danny. "Ready? Three!"


	2. If At First You Don't Succeed

**Author's** **Note:** I'm going to try to get a new chapter up once a week, hopefully on Mondays. I don't know how successful I'll be, but I'm going to try. 

**If At First You Don't Succeed…**

As it turned out, Danny was the one who spend the night in the hospital, getting the hole in his shoulder patched up. After admonishing his partner not to take any stupid risks, he'd gone and gotten himself shot, during their insane Butch and Sundance rush of the idiots robbing the restaurant. He hadn't even noticed, at first, what with the adrenaline pumping through his veins, but after they'd handed the would-be criminals off to the HPD, the burning pain radiating from his arm had started to make its presence known.

And, of course, Steve's reaction had been to immediately bundle him into the Camaro and drive to the hospital even faster than his usual breakneck speed, even though Danny had assured him that he wasn't bleeding _that_ badly. (Danny also realized that he would have done the same thing, if his role, and Steve's, had been reversed, and he wondered if it was good or bad that he'd apparently rubbed off on Steve so much.)

Steve had stormed into the ER, dragging a still-protesting Danny by the good arm, and he'd bullied the nurses into getting Danny into an exam room. Unfortunately, that was where Steve's influence had ended, and even invoking 5-0 and the Governor hadn't been enough to get a doctor into see Danny any faster. Which meant that they'd been cooling their heels in the exam room for forty-five minutes, and Steve was starting to get impatient.

_'Maybe 'starting to' isn't the right phrase,'_ Danny thought, watching as Steve paced the confines of the small room like a caged tiger. _'Steve looks like he's about to explode.'_

"You could always sit down," he offered, but Steve barely spared the rickety-looking chair in the corner a glance before he resumed his circuit. Danny watched him pace for a few more minutes, barely holding his own impatience in check, before he sighed loudly to get Steve's attention. "Okay, I'll bite," he said, when his partner stopped pacing and looked over at him. "What's going on with you?"

For a few seconds, he didn't think that he was going to get an answer, but then Steve stared down at his shoes, muttering something under his breath that Danny couldn't hear.

"I didn't catch that," he prompted, encouragingly, and Steve sighed.

"You got shot," he repeated himself, louder this time.

"Yes, I did," Danny agreed. "And I'm lucky that the idiot holding the gun was a bad shot, because the bullet isn't that deeply embedded in my shoulder."

"But, you still got shot," Steve insisted, a mulish expression on his face. "You shouldn't get shot, you have Grace-"

Danny held up a hand to forestall any further arguments, knowing exactly what Steve was getting at.

"Okay, stop right there," he said, talking right over Steve's objections. "First of all, I am a cop, and I knew the risks when I took the job, including getting shot. They are risks I will gladly take to protect the people I've sworn my life to. Second, I am your partner, which makes us equals, both at work and in this relationship, and which means that you don't get to wrap me up in cotton, like I suspect you dearly want to, right now. And third, if this relationship of ours goes the way I expect it to, Grace is going to be as much yours as she is mine, which means that you don't get to throw the 'single dad' card at me, because we're both going to be parents in our weird little marriage."

Steve stared at him in silence for several, long seconds. "Did you just use 'marriage' and 'us' in the same sentence?" he finally asked.

"_That_ is what you took away from that little speech?" Danny demanded, incredulously.

"No, I got the rest, too," Steve assured him, a strange look on his face. "You'll kick my balls into my throat if I try to play the caveman."

"Oh, good," Danny snarked, "you can read between the lines."

"Yeah," Steve agreed. "So, am I reading the whole 'marriage' thing, correctly?"

"Would you drop the marriage thing?" Danny exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air and wincing at the way the movement pulled at his shoulder. "Forget I said anything about marriage!"

"Oh, no," Steve said, with a laugh. "You brought it up. You, Danny Williams, want to marry me!" This last was said with a cat-who-ate-the-canary smirk, and, of course, the doctor had to walk in at that, exact moment. Steve took one look at the flabbergasted look on Danny's face and burst out laughing.

To his credit, the doctor didn't even blink at the comment. Danny wondered if that said more about the doctor's unflappable personality, or about his and Steve's reputations on the island. He was also pretty sure he didn't want to know the answer.

"Detective Williams," the doctor started, "according to your x-rays, the bullet didn't travel too far into your shoulder. It appears to be lodged into your deltoid, and will be a relatively simple matter to get it out."

"Define relatively simple," Danny retorted.

"We can do the extraction with a local anesthetic," the doctor assured him. "Don't worry; this won't take long at all."

The next half-hour was filled with white-knuckled tension on both Danny and Steve's parts. Danny wouldn't have been surprised to find that Steve was holding as tightly to his hand as he was to Steve's. But, finally the bullet was out, and Danny relaxed his death-grip on Steve's hand, flexing the feeling back into his fingers while the doctor bandaged his shoulder.

When he was done, the doctor wrote Danny a prescription for pain meds, and then he left them alone in the room. Steve helped Danny get his shirt back on, easing the sleeve over his injured shoulder, carefully, and then being just as gentle with his coat.

"Well," he remarked, as they left the hospital and headed for Danny's car, "this has been one hell of a first date."

"Oh, no," Danny said, quickly, surprising Steve into looking at him. "This was not our first date. First dates do not involve shootouts, or visits to the hospital, or bullet wounds."

"Ours do," Steve muttered, under his breath, and Danny smacked him on the arm with his good hand.

"We didn't even get to have dinner," he reminded Steve. "No. We are going to do this, again, and we are going to do it, right, next time."


	3. The Definition of Insanity

**Author's** **Note:** Thanks to everyone who's been reading and reviewing. You guys rock. Also, if you have any suggestions or requests for dates for our beloved Steve/Danno, I'm all ears. 

**The Definition of Insanity**

In retrospect, repeating their disastrous non-date of dinner and a walk on the beach was probably a bad idea. But, Steve had gone out of his way to ensure that their night went perfectly, and dinner had gone off without a hitch, lulling him into a false sense of security. The walk on the beach had even started out well.

It just wasn't _ending_ well.

"I – am – going – to – kill you!" Danny panted out, as they sprinted across the golden sand of the beach.

"How is this possibly my fault?" Steve demanded, as he kept pace with his partner.

"Because I wouldn't be here if you hadn't asked me out on a date!" Danny growled, in an explosive rush of breath.

From behind them came an answering growl, and Steve risked a glance over his shoulder to check on their progress. Their pursuer was loping along behind them, mouth open in a macabre imitation of a toothy grin, tongue lolling out of its mouth.

"But it you hadn't gone out with me," Steve pointed out, "you'd never be able to say that you outran a tiger."

From the searing look Danny shot him, that was the wrong thing to say. In fact, Steve was starting to regret it, himself. He didn't know where the tiger had come from, and frankly, he didn't care. He just wanted to be able stay ahead of the damn thing.

The tiger had first been spotted nearly ten minutes ago, sending late-night beachgoers screaming for their cars. When they'd seen it, he and Danny had both had the same idea: make as much noise as possible and get the huge cat interested in them, rather than the other people on the beach. And it had worked.

Steve was beginning to think that it had worked too well.

Spotting a lifeguard stand about a hundred yards ahead of them, Steve pointed at it. He and Danny poured on the speed until they reached the empty stand, clambering up the ladder until they reached the top. They huddled inside the stand, watching warily as the tiger loped up to their hiding place, pacing slowly around the edge. It was looking up to where they were, but it wasn't making any attempt to get to them.

"Do you think tigers climb?" he asked, getting a dirty look from Danny.

"Thank you," he bit off, "I hadn't thought about that."

"Why do you think it stopped?" Steve asked.

"I don't know," Danny sighed. "Maybe it's playing with us before it eats us."

Steve fell silent at that, watching the tiger circle the lifeguard stand several times before it finally flopped down in the sand. It stretched and yawned, displaying an impressive set of teeth and claws.

"Danny?" Steve said, after a few more minutes of quiet. "I'm sorry that I got you chased by a tiger."

A wordless grunt was his only answer, and he glanced over at Danny to see his partner staring off into the distance. After a second, he saw what Danny was looking at: a family walking along the beach, completely oblivious to the danger that lay ahead.

"Stop!" Danny screamed, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Turn back!"

"Stop!" Steve echoed, desperately, but the people in the distance hadn't heard them. If anything, they were getting closer.

The tiger, however, had heard them. And its attention was focused on the people getting closer and closer. It stood up and started its slow lope toward the group, and finally they noticed the tiger, if their panicked screams were anything to go by.

"No!" Danny yelled, and he practically threw himself off the lifeguard stand, with Steve right behind him. "No, get away from them!"

He sprinted toward the tiger, who'd turned at the sound of his voice, and then Steve watched in horror as the huge cat changed direction and ran toward Danny. He could feel his heart stop in his chest when his partner went down underneath the huge creature.

"Danny!" he screamed, and the tiger looked up long enough for him to see Danny pinned beneath it.

He ran toward his partner, cursing, yet again, his lack of a gun. If they made it out of this one, alive, he was never leaving his gun at home, again. Romance be damned. Actually, now that he thought about it, not dying by way of huge, man-eating tiger was sounding pretty damn romantic in comparison.

He reached his fallen partner, fearing the worst, but he was confused by the lack of blood staining the sand. He was even more confused when Danny's hand, appearing to be still attached to the rest of his body, wormed its way out from under the huge mass of fur to push at the tiger's chest. There was a muffled sound, and then Steve watched in amazement as the tiger rolled off Danny, baring its stomach to the air.

Danny grunted as he slowly pushed himself to his feet, looking completely whole and uninjured. Steve reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling Danny behind him so that he stood between him and the tiger. The tiger didn't seem to like that, sitting up and eyeing Steve like he was a big, juicy steak.

And then from behind him, he heard, "No, Mittens. Bad."

To his complete and utter shock, the tiger actually seemed to shrink away at the sharp tone in Danny's voice, ears drooping as it stared down at the sand. Steve slowly turned around and stared at Danny with much the same amazement.

"Mittens?" he echoed, slowly.

"It's got a collar and tags," Danny told him, sounding far too calm for a man who'd just been tackled by a tiger. Steve expected an imminent explosion.

"Its name is Mittens?" Steve demanded, incredulously, quieting quickly when the tiger growled, softly. "Mittens?" he hissed, softly.

"I think it's a her, actually," Danny replied. "I think she just wanted to play."

As if in answer, the tiger – _Mittens_, for god's sake – crept forwards and nuzzled at Danny with her huge head, practically knocking him off his feet. Steve instinctively steadied his partner, still keeping a wary eye on the seemingly-docile cat in front of them.

Animal Control arrived shortly after that, and Steve watched, stunned, as Mittens allowed herself to be tranquilized by the men, at least once Danny had scratched behind her ears and called her a good girl. Her huge head dropped to the sand as the drugs overtook her, and Danny stood up from his crouch with a wince as his knee popped.

"I think that's the most peaceful takedown we've ever had," one of the men said, wonderingly. "Detective Williams-"

"I have no desire to repeat this experience, any time soon," Danny said, before the man could finish his sentence.

"Worth a shot," came the reply, and the man shrugged.

"So, what's going to happen to Mittens, here?" Steve asked, watching as they loaded the cat into their van.

"Zoo," came the short answer. "Which is funny, considering that Mittens' former owner is also looking at life in a cage." The man gave them a predatory smile as he shut the back door of the van, looking scarily like the cat he'd just tranquilized. "Lucky for us, he very helpfully put his name and address on the other side of the tag."

"Well," Danny announced, watching as the Animal Control van drove off, "I think that we can safely call this night a bust."

Steve couldn't really find it in him to protest. He and Danny went back to where they'd parked the Camaro, and Danny dropped him off at his house before going back to his new apartment. And Steve spent the rest of the night wondering if he was going to be lucky enough to get a third chance at a first date with Danny.

When he walked into headquarters the next morning, he didn't see Danny, and his heart dropped. The other man had left a short message on his phone that morning, asking if he could drive himself in, and Steve had spent the drive hoping to see Danny once he reached work. Apparently not.

What he did see, once he stepped into his office, was the stuffed tiger sitting in a place of honor on his desk. He picked up the toy, smiling when he saw the bright red collar around its neck, with a tag emblazoned 'Mittens'. Then, he turned around at the sound of someone coming up behind him, to see Danny leaning against his doorframe.

"Next time," Danny told him, "I'm picking where we go."

Steve felt a huge grin spread across his face at his partner's words. "It's a date," he promised.


	4. Third Time's the Charm, Pt 1

**Author's Note: **This is the first part of chapter four, which is turning out to be a bit longer than I expected. Hopefully, I'll get the next part up tonight.

**Third Time's the Charm**

_'Meet me at Rachel and Stan's place.'_

Steve stared down at the text message in confusion. He checked the display one more time just to make sure that the message really was from Danny, and then he hit the buzzer at the gate. The gate swung open a few seconds later, and he figured that they'd been expecting his arrival.

He pulled up to the house, parking behind Danny's Camaro. As he got out of his truck, the front door of the house opened with a bang, and Grace flew down the stairs to slam into him in a full-contact hug.

"Uncle Steve, Uncle Steve, Uncle Steve!"

"Hey, Grace," Steve said, grinning in the face of the little girl's enthusiasm.

"Danno's inside," Grace told him, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the front door with a surprising amount of strength. "You're coming today, right?"

"Coming to what?" Steve asked, feeling completely clueless.

He didn't get an answer, because as soon as he stepped into the house, he was greeted by the sound of a cat being murdered. His hands immediately flew up to cover his ears, and Grace grimaced as well, nodding in agreement.

"Mom says the baby has colic," she confided, and Steve stared down at her in disbelief.

"All of that noise is coming from an infant?" he asked, incredulously.

"Hardly an infant. He's four months old," came an exhausted-sounding voice from ahead of him, and he looked up to see Danny standing in the doorway, jiggling the still-screaming baby in his arms. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he was pacing monotonously back and forth, holding the baby to his chest.

"You called?" Steve asked, waving his cell phone and Danny, and after a moment, he got a tired nod.

"Need a favor," came the short answer. "See, Grace's class is going on a field trip, today, and Rachel and I were going to chaperone. And then last night, Rachel called because she and Stan haven't slept in a week, and Charlie won't stop crying-"

"What do you want me to do?" Steve asked, praying that the answer wasn't going involve Danny handing him the screaming baby. He was terrified of the possibility of dropping the kid – and of the three people who would kill him if he did.

"Grace's class is now short one chaperone," Danny told him, as he turned smoothly in the middle of his pacing and headed back toward the doorway. "Want to come?"

"You know," Steve called to Danny's retreating back, "when you said you wanted to do something on our day off, chaperoning Grace's field trip wasn't really what I had in mind."

"Oh, come on, Uncle Steve!" Grace spoke up, eagerly, before Danny could say anything. "We're going to the aquarium. It's going to be really fun!"

Steve made the mistake of looking down at the little girl before he answered. He was sunk as soon as he saw the beseeching expression in those big, brown eyes. He'd seen the same look on Danny's face, a time or two, and he couldn't help but wonder who taught it to whom.

"Don't you want to come, Uncle Steve?" Grace asked, and, damn it, her lower lip was quivering just a little bit, and he could have sworn he saw a glint of tears in her eyes. He'd always been helpless in the face of crying women, and crying girls were no exception to that rule. Especially crying girls who called him 'Uncle Steve' and acted like he was some kind of superhero.

Steve sighed, and that was apparently all the answer that Grace needed. The tears disappeared as quickly as they'd appeared, and she shot him a wide, beaming smile. She ran off to grab her backpack with a happy cry, and out of the corner of her eye, Steve saw her give Danny a not-so-subtle high-five as she ran past him.

"You planned that," Steve accused him, going after Danny. "You're a terrible person, Danny, setting the power of your daughter on unsuspecting victims."

"Who?" Danny asked, an innocent look on his face. "Me?"

"Yeah, you," Steve grumbled, feeling a bit like he'd just been yanked into a childish argument – and he was losing.

"Just for that," Danny said, "you can hold him while I get a bottle ready."

Then, to Steve's utter horror, Danny placed the screaming infant into his arms.

Steve gaped wordlessly down at the child while Danny quickly and efficiently positioned his hands around the baby. He swallowed hard and resisted the overwhelming urge to beg Danny not to leave him alone when he stepped away to the refrigerator. Looking down at the baby, Steve pasted a weak smile on his face and gingerly attempted the jiggling motion that Danny had been doing, earlier.

To his amazement, Charlie blinked up at him and stopped crying.

Danny whirled around, staring at him in stunned silence. Overhead, Steve could hear the pounding of feet, and then Rachel burst into the kitchen, a frantic look on her face.

"Danny, the baby-" she cried, but then she stopped short when she saw Steve holding her son. "He's stopped crying?" she asked, as she sagged weakly against the doorframe.

"He's stopped crying," Danny echoed, incredulously, staring at Steve and the now-silent baby. Then, his gaze sharpened and he put the bottle he'd been fixing down on the counter as he marched over to Steve. "He's not a bomb, Steven," he scolded him, as he repositioned his hands.

"I'd be more comfortable holding a bomb," Steve grumbled, freezing when Charlie snuggled against his chest with a soft sigh. "Um, what's he doing?"

"Looks like he's falling asleep," Danny commented, idly. He shot a look at Rachel, who was nodding, slowly. "You're thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I am," Rachel replied, mysteriously, "and it's brilliant. You convince him; I need sleep."

Giving Grace a hug, the frazzled-looking woman stumbled out of the kitchen, presumably heading back to her bedroom. Steve stared at her departing back, and then over at Danny, who had gone back to fixing the bottle.

"Um, what just happened here?" Steve asked.

"Mom just volunteered you to babysit," Grace informed him, as she came into the kitchen, her backpack slung over one shoulder. "Danno, we've got to get going, or we're going to be late."

"Don't worry, Monkey," Danny reassured her. "We'll get there in plenty of time."

"I don't want to miss the aquarium," Grace insisted, hopping eagerly from one foot to another. "Danno, come on!"

"Excuse me," Steve interrupted them, feeling faint. When Danny shot him a questioning look, he asked, "Did I really just get volunteered to babysit?"


	5. Third Time's the Charm, Pt 2

**Author's Note: **Looks like we've got at least one more part to go for this one. Not that I'll bet that anyone's complaining, right?

**Third Time's the Charm, Part 2**

"Excuse me."

Danny had never heard that particular tone in his partner's voice, before, and that had him turning around. What he saw took him by surprise. Steve, still holding Charlie like someone else might cradle a live grenade, had a look of absolute terror on his face. Danny had seen him face down things would make even the most hardened soldier hesitate; hell, he hadn't even blinked in the face of a possibly-murderous tiger during their last disastrous attempt at a date.

But now, confronted with a baby, he looked like he wanted to pass out.

Danny raised an eyebrow, silently asking for an explanation, and Steve cleared his throat before he tried to speak.

"Did I really just get volunteered to babysit?" he asked, hoarsely.

"More or less," Danny told him, and Steve's eyes went wide.

"More or less?" he echoed, incredulously. He shot Charlie a look, like he thought the baby was going to wake up and immediately try to jump out of his arms. "What does that mean, more or less?"

"Stop panicking," Danny said, trying to sound soothing. "Don't worry, Steve, I'm going to be there with you the whole time."

"There with me?" Steve repeated, feeling like he was missing something, and then he groaned in disbelief. "Danny, you're chaperoning Grace's field trip."

"Yep," Danny agreed, as he found Charlie's diaper bag and started packing it, working almost on autopilot.

"Then, how-" Steve demanded, clearly panicking at the thought of taking Charlie to the aquarium.

"Babe, would you relax?" Danny interrupted him, sounding exasperated. "You're going to be fine."

"Why me?" Steve asked, coming dangerously close to whining.

"Because that is the first time in a week that Charlie has been quiet," Rachel said, from the doorway, and Steve jumped, his grip instinctively tightening on Charlie to keep the baby from moving. Charlie didn't even react to the movement, still sleeping soundly against Steve's chest.

"Please, Steven," Rachel went on, pleadingly, and Danny blinked at his ex-wife's use of Steve's first name. "Charlie won't sleep, he barely eats, he just cries and cries – Grace was never this fussy."

"There's fussy," Danny spoke up, "and then there are the banshee screams this child has been emitting for the last twelve hours. Steve, nobody has slept in this house since he started crying. And that includes me, when I came over last night." He sighed, dragging a hand through his already-unkempt hair. "I spent all last night walking around trying to get him to fall asleep."

"Why me?" Steve echoed, plaintively, and Danny shot him a small grin.

"Probably because you're the first person to hold him who isn't stressed out," Danny replied. "He can sense that you're calm, and he's responding to it."

"I am far from calm," Steve told him.

"Calmer than any of the rest of us, then," Danny amended. "Steve, even I'm begging you, now. Please do not put that child down."

He shot Steve the same, pleading look that Grace had turned on him, earlier, knowing that his partner was all but helpless to resist. And just like he'd hoped, Steve sighed, giving a tiny nod.

"All right," he agreed, softly. "But, I can't keep holding him like this, all day."

"Won't have to," Danny told him, as he grabbed the chest carrier that Rachel had brought out from the bedroom. "Here, put this on."

"How?" Steve demanded, with an eye roll, and Danny frowned, thoughtfully.

"Here," he muttered, and then he maneuvered deftly around Steve to get the carrier strapped onto his chest, and get Charlie into the carrier.

The baby woke up once, making grumpy noises until he was settled against Steve's chest, again, and then he closed his eyes and promptly went back to sleep. Steve stared down at him in amazement, and then shot Danny a silent look.

"When I said that no one was sleeping in this house," Danny told him, "I meant it. Charlie hasn't been sleeping, either; he's exhausted. I wouldn't be surprised if he slept nearly the whole day."

Steve looked down at Charlie, again, pursing his lips. "Stay asleep, please," Danny heard him whisper, a little desperately.

"Danno!" Grace's cry floated in front the other room. "Let's go!"

"Coming, Monkey!" Danny called back, glancing over at Charlie to make sure that they hadn't woken him up. He shouldn't have worried; the baby didn't even stir.

Danny slung the diaper bag over his shoulder, and as he and Steve passed Rachel in the doorway, Steve hesitated behind him. His partner said something too low for Danny to make out, but he heard his ex-wife's reply, clearly.

"If I didn't trust you, Commander," she said, quietly, "you wouldn't still be holding my son. I know you'll keep him as safe as you do Grace when she's with you."

"For the record," Danny said, as they walked out to where Grace was waiting impatiently by the Camaro, "I've trusted you with Grace's life since the day you met her."

Steve stared at him, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.

"Let's get going," Danny said, cheerfully, as he opened the passenger door of the car for Grace.

They had a bit of a dilemma when it came to Charlie and the car seat, and they spent an uncomfortable fifteen minutes listening to him fuss angrily because he'd been separated from Steve.

"You know," Steve remarked, breathing a quiet sigh of relief as Charlie calmed down when he was strapped into the chest carrier, "I really don't think that Rachel and Stan are going to be happy if their son won't let me leave at the end of the night."

"He'll let you leave," Danny assured him. "He's just tired, and grumpy, and he feels safe with you. He'll stop being so clingy once he gets some sleep."

"And then someone else can hold him?" Steve asked, a slightly desperate note in his voice, and Danny chuckled.

"When he stops screaming," he assured his partner, "I'll take him off your hands."

They walked into the school, meeting up with Grace's class in their room, where the teacher started explaining the rules of the field trip. Danny and Steve joined the rest of the chaperones at the back of the room, Steve getting no few stares from the other parents. Steve, for his part, just curled his arms protectively around Charlie's sleepy form ignoring the other parents.

Danny couldn't ignore them, though, not with the way some of them were so blatantly staring. One man, who looked rather familiar, was eying Steve like he'd sprouted a second head, and finally Danny couldn't take it any longer.

"Problem?" he asked, softly, and the man smirked at him.

"Is crime so dead that the cops have to rent themselves out as babysitters?" he asked, and Danny recognized the man as a defense lawyer to worked to clear many of the criminals they struggled to put behind bars.

He was pretty sure that he had a voodoo doll in the man's image stashed away somewhere in his desk. He was also fairly certain that he was going to be adding a few more pins to the doll after the day was done.

From the glint in Steve's eyes, it was clear he recognized the other man, as well. Danny had seen that look, before; it never boded well for anyone involved.

"Hardly a babysitter," he drawled, shooting the man a lazy smirk. "More of a bodyguard, really."

"Bodyguard?" the man scoffed, incredulously. "Just who is this kid?"

At the front of the room, Grace's teacher pointedly cleared her throat, glaring at the man until he shrank under her gaze. Steve chuckled, softly, elbowing Danny and nodding at the teacher.

"Someone's in trouble," he muttered, under his breath.

"Yeah," Danny retorted, just as quietly, "us, if you don't stop talking."

After another few minutes, the teacher finished her instructions to the students, and they herded the kids out to the bus and got them loaded up. They were the last chaperones on the bus, and Grace's teacher stopped them before they could get on the bus.

"I'm Ms. Kamaka," she introduced herself, shaking both their hands. "Detective Williams, I wanted to thank you, again for chaperoning. I see we have a couple of guests?" she added, pointedly.

"Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett," Steve introduced himself, before Danny could say anything.

"Oh," Kamaka said, drawing the word out. "So, you're Steve."

Steve nodded, slowly, leaning over to Danny. "Should I be worried?" he asked, in a loud whisper. "Because that sounds like I should be worried."

"Grace raves about you," Kamaka reassured him, with a smile. "About both of you, actually. She's positively enamored of her Danno and Uncle Steve."

"Enamored, huh?" Steve asked, with a grin of his own.

"And, who is our guest?" Kamaka went on, gesturing to Charlie.

"Grace's baby brother," Danny answered. "It's been a long week, and this is the first time he's slept in days." He waited for the woman's protest, but it never came. Instead, she just smiled down at Charlie and then gestured them onto the bus ahead of her.

"I think we just dodged a bullet," Steve muttered, under his breath, and Danny could only agree. At least, until the next time Charlie woke up and started screaming.

They sat down in the bench behind Grace, surrounded by a bunch of little girls that immediately started cooing over Charlie as soon as they saw him. Danny was able to keep them from bothering the baby during the trip to the aquarium, and once they'd arrived at their destination, the kids were all too excited by the prospect of the animals to give a second thought to Charlie.

"Now, everyone," Kamaka was saying, as the last people got off the bus, "I want you all to remember what we talked about. Have respect, be courteous, and be on your best behavior."

"Isn't she repeating herself?" Grace asked, in a hushed whisper, and Danny leaned down to answer her.

"From what I've seen of some of those boys," he replied, nodding at the boys at the back of the group, "it's something that needs to be said a few times before it sinks in."

Grace giggled, turning her attention back to her teacher. Kamaka was just giving the students one final admonition to behave themselves, she turned the excited kids loose on the aquarium.

"You ready?" Danny asked, in an undertone.

Steve eyed the kids sprinting ahead of them, an apprehensive look on his face. Then, the apprehension vanished, and he squared his shoulders with determination.

"Bring it on."


	6. Third Time's the Charm, Pt 3

**Author's Note: **This is the last part of "Third Time's the Charm". It wasn't supposed to be this long, but things got away from me.**  
><strong>

**Third Time's the Charm, Part 3**

After the initial rush into the aquarium, the chaperones had corralled the kids into a more-or-less orderly line. Kamaka had arranged for a guided tour for the class, and the docent had taken them into one of the educational areas for a half-hour presentation. The kids had mostly been well-behaved during the presentation, and to Steve's unending relief, Charlie had slept soundly through the entire thing.

The docent, a young man who'd introduced himself as Kevin, had then led the group through the exhibits. They'd already gone through the indoor exhibits, including the sharks – which the kids had loved – and had circled through most of the outdoor exhibits. Now, they were headed to what Kevin said was his favorite exhibit – the monk seals.

Danny had ceded control of his camera over to Grace early on in the trip, and she'd taken a couple hundred pictures so far, and showed no signs of stopping. Steve was fairly certain they'd be able to reconstruct their path through the aquarium from Grace's pictures, once she was done.

As Steve walked along the path, he kept an eye on the kids that he and Danny had been assigned to watch over. All of the kids had become excitable during the last hour, but these boys were more than most, and Steve figured that he and Danny had been put in charge of the kids in order to keep them in line.

Luckily, Steve had a secret weapon in the form of Charlie; he'd discovered that none of the kids wanted to be responsible for waking the baby up, especially once Grace had described in great detail her baby brother's piercing cry.

When they arrived at the monk seals' habitat, Kevin waited for the eagerly-chattering kids to quiet down so that he could begin his presentation. When that didn't work, he clapped his hands to get their attention. When _that_ didn't work, Danny rolled his eyes at Steve, put two fingers to his lips, and let out a piercing whistle that cut through the kids' noise.

"That's enough," he said, as the noise subsided into mutters. "Let's settle down, okay?"

Obediently, the kids turned their attention back to Kevin, who began his presentation on the monk seals. Steve eased through the kids to where Danny was standing over by the fence. He leaned against the fence next to his partner, one hand automatically curling around Charlie to support him, even through the chest carrier.

"Well?" Danny prompted, as they listened to Kevin's speech with half an ear.

"This isn't going as badly as I thought it would," Steve admitted, getting a grin from Danny. "But," he added, "I still wouldn't call this a date."

"What if I buy you lunch?" Danny asked, teasingly, and Steve chuckled.

The sound woke Charlie up, and the baby made a grumpy noise as he opened his eyes, peering up at Steve with a curious expression on his face, like he'd never seen him before. Given how quickly he'd fallen asleep earlier that morning, he might not have even registered who'd been holding him the whole time.

"Hi," Steve said, awkwardly, as he looked down at Charlie, and the baby let out a huge yawn. "Um," Steve added, glancing over at Danny when the baby didn't immediately fall back asleep, and Danny laughed at the look on his face.

"He's not a bomb," he reminded Steve, an amused look on his face.

"I distinctly remember you promising to take him off my hands once he woke up," Steve reminded him.

"It amazes me," Danny remarked, as he unhooked the carrier from around Steve's chest, "that you can face everything that you have without blinking, but one little baby sends you running for the hills."

"I haven't run, yet," Steve grumbled, but he breathed a quiet sigh of relief when Charlie was safely in Danny's arms.

"Yet," Danny echoed, with a smile. "Why do kids make you so nervous, Steve?"

"Not kids," Steve said, defensively, "babies. They're just so tiny, and breakable – how'd you keep from dropping Grace all the time?"

Danny leaned over like he was about to impart some great secret. "By holding onto her like she was a live bomb," he whispered, and Steve cracked up.

"I heard that," Grace said, making Steve jump, and he looked down at her scowling face. "Hey, Danno," she went on, glancing at her father, "can I take Charlie over to see the seals?"

"You need to be careful," Danny cautioned her, as he strapped Charlie's carrier onto her chest and tightened the straps. "Stay away from the edge."

"I will," Grace promised, solemnly. "I just want to show him the seals."

Steve watched as Grace made her way slowly over to where Kevin was standing. He looked down as Grace proudly showed the seals to her baby brother, pointing out the sleek shapes cutting through the clear water. He glanced over at Danny to see a look of unmistakable pride on his face.

"It's probably different when you have your own kids, though, right?" he asked Danny, who nodded. "I mean," Steve went on, without thinking, "I'll probably be better at this whole thing once it's-"

_'Once it's our child,'_ he'd been about to say, but he swallowed the words before they could escape. His and Danny's relationship was far too new to bring certain topics into the equation, even if he couldn't imagine spending the rest of his life with anyone else.

_'This thing between us is either going to go very, very right, or very, very wrong,'_ Steve realized. _'I don't think that there's going to be a middle ground with us.'_

And he so desperately wanted things to go right. He'd been able to make a clean break, in the past, with relationships that hadn't worked out, but he couldn't walk away from Danny. Didn't want to walk away from him.

"Be better at this whole thing once, what?" Danny prompted, and Steve flushed.

"Nothing," he said, even though his partner shot him a suspicious look. "Absolutely nothing."

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

After the field trip was over, they got the kids back onto the bus and back to school about an hour before the last bell rang. Danny and Steve took Charlie to the park across from the school to wait for Grace, and when she got out, they all went for shave ice.

"Can we go to the beach?" Grace asked, as she carefully nibbled at her mango cone.

"Maybe another day, Monkey," Danny told her, as he loaded Charlie into his car seat. "Charlie's still not feeling very well, remember? We need to get him home."

"Okay," Grace agreed, easily. "We'll have fun at home, right, Charlie?" she asked her brother, and the baby giggled when she tickled his stomach. "Hey, he's laughing, again."

"Yeah," Danny agreed, shooting Steve an affectionate look. "Your Uncle Steve's got a knack, all right."

"Thanks for cheering Charlie up, Uncle Steve," Grace said, happily. "Now I don't have to sleep with ear plugs, anymore."

"Couldn't have everyone sleep deprived while Charlie screamed," Danny shrugged, when Steve looked over at him. "Ear plugs meant that Grace would get a full night's sleep."

"Not a bad idea," Steve agreed.

When they arrived at Rachel and Stan's house, Grace bounded out of the car and sprinted up to the house, calling for her mother. Danny and Steve followed at a more sedate pace, Steve holding Charlie in his arms. Danny shot his partner a look, barely holding back a grin. He would never get Steve to admit that he'd gotten attached to the baby, but it was plain to see from the look on his face.

Rachel met them at the front door, looking a hundred times better than she had that morning, and Danny wouldn't have been surprised if she'd slept the entire time they were gone. She took her son from him, a smile gracing her features when her little boy beamed happily at her.

"He's like a whole new Charlie," she said, relief in her voice. "I should enlist you to babysit more often, Steven."

"Don't be surprised, then, if his first words are 'hand grenade'," Danny pointed out, and Rachel frowned, like she was rethinking her comment. Steve looked like he was hoping for that, as well.

"Perhaps not," Rachel decided, and Steve let out a quiet sigh of relief. "So, would you like to stay for coffee?"

Before either of them could say anything, Steve's cell phone went off, with Danny's ringing a second later.

"Kono," Steve confirmed, as Danny looked down at the display to see Chin's name on the screen.

"Guess that's a no, then," Rachel said. Shifting Charlie to her hip, she surprised Danny by hugging Steve, and then him. "Be careful, both of you," she told them.

"We will," Danny promised her, and then he knelt down to catch Grace as she rushed him in a hug.

"You'll be safe, right, Danno?" she whispered, as she clung to him, and Danny held her tightly against him.

"I promise," he said. "I'll be safe."

"You, too, Uncle Steve," Grace said, sternly, as she pulled reluctantly away from Danny and hugged Steve, as well.

"We will," Steve said, echoing Danny's sentiment. "We'll be careful, Grace."

Then, the two of them headed back out to the car. The drive to the crime scene was mostly quiet, with Steve driving while Danny got details of the latest crime from Chin and Kono. When they got to the docks, where the body had been found, Danny hesitated before getting out of the car.

"What's up?" Steve asked him.

"I wanted to thank you for today," Danny told him. "I know this wasn't an ideal date-"

"This wasn't any kind of date," Steve retorted, but he was smiling when he said it.

"How do you figure?" Danny asked. "I mean, compared to the other two attempts, there was no hail of bullets, no runaway tiger-"

"No kiss," Steve interrupted him, shortly. Danny raised an eyebrow at him, questioningly, and Steve plowed on. "Dates end with kisses. I may be out of practice, but I do remember that much."

Danny laughed; he honestly hadn't been expecting that. Then, in a move Steve clearly hadn't been expecting (although, how could he not, with a lead-in like that?), Danny reached out, grabbed the front of Steve's shirt, and pulled him in for a long, slow kiss.

"Happy, now?" he murmured, when they separated.

"Ecstatic," Steve replied, just as quietly. "But, that still wasn't a date."

Danny rolled his eyes as he opened the glove box and pulled his gun out. "Come on," he said, as they got out of the car. "Let's go catch bad guys."


	7. Catch a Falling Star

**Catch a Falling Star (And Put it In Your Pocket)**

"We're going _where_?"

"Midnight camping trip," Steve said, a maddening smirk playing at his lips. "We're going up Ko'olau, again."

"Okay," Danny said, fighting for patience, "the first time we tried that, you fell off a cliff."

"So, we won't go near any cliffs," Steve replied, with a shrug. "I mean, come on. What are the odds of finding a second dead body up on the mountain, again?"

"This is us," Danny felt compelled to point out. "We're practically stumbling over dead bodies on our doorstep."

"Hey!" Kono snapped, from the other side of the office. "Don't jinx us."

"Yeah, brah," Chin added. "We've got enough trouble following the two of you around, as it is."

"Insolence gets you extra paperwork," Steve threatened, but Chin just grinned at him, undaunted.

"We have the day off, tomorrow," he said, smugly, "and I have an entire day planned out with Malia. You're not going to ruin that, no matter how hard you try."

"What about you?" Danny asked Kono, who shot him a smile of her own. "Got any big plans?"

"Just me, my board, and the waves," Kono told him.

"And we're going camping," Steve repeated, getting a wry look from his partner.

"At midnight," he said, skeptically. "Dare I ask why we're going camping at midnight?"

"It's the best time," came the answer, and Danny sighed.

"Best time for what?" he pressed.

"You'll see," was all Steve would say.

Danny bit back a dismayed groan. He hated hearing those particular words out of his partner's mouth.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

Three hours into their hike, it was just starting to get dark. Steve called a halt when they reached the top of the ridge they were climbing, and they worked quickly to set up camp.

"So," Danny prompted, as they sat on the blanket spread out in front of their tent, "why are we up here?"

"What time is it?" Steve asked, instead, and Danny just shook his head in exasperation.

"Just after eight," he answered, looking at his watch. "Are you going to answer my question?"

"In about three hours," Steve replied, and Danny rolled his eyes.

"In three hours," he echoed. "What, exactly, do you propose we do for those three hours?"

"Well, I can think of something," Steve muttered, under his breath, deflating when Danny shot him a look that suggested that he was not amused. "Or, not. We could talk?" he suggested, hopefully.

"Or," Danny offered, "since this has been a very long day, and since I jumped onto a moving vehicle this morning to apprehend a suspect, I'm going to go in the tent and get some sleep. You can wake me up in three hours, okay?"

"Okay," Steve agreed, and Danny crawled into the tent and collapsed on top of his sleeping bag.

He hadn't been lying to Steve; he really was exhausted after the day he'd had. What he hadn't told his partner was how badly he'd wrenched his knee jumping onto that stupid car, and how he wished he had an ice pack, right then. Even some ibuprofen for the pain. But, he had neither, so he closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

He dozed more than anything else, but at some point he must have fallen asleep, because he could have sworn he felt Steve carefully massaging his knee, fingers moving in slow, soothing movements that eased the pain shooting up and down his leg. But, he had to have been dreaming.

When Steve shook him awake, Danny opened his eyes to find his partner watching him with a strange expression on his face.

"Time for the show," Steve told him.

"What show?" Danny asked, but Steve just grinned at him and ducked back out of the tent. "Am I ever going to get a straight answer on this trip?" he grumbled to himself.

Crawling out of the tent, Danny joined Steve out on the thick blanket, stretching his sore leg out in front of him. Steve reached out absently, cupping Danny's knee and starting a slow massage of the injured muscles. Danny stared down at Steve's hand, and then over at Steve. The other man was watching the sky, seemingly unaware of what he was even doing.

"So, what am I supposed to be looking at?" Danny finally asked, deciding that if Steve was going to ignore what he was doing, then he would, too.

"Up there," Steve said, nodding up at the night sky. "Trust me," he added, when Danny glared at him for yet another non-answer. "You don't want me to spoil this for you."

Danny huffed an irritated sigh, but he obligingly tipped his head back and stared up at the clear sky. After a few minutes, he shifted positions to work the feeling back into his stiff shoulders, slinging an arm around Steve. Steve leaned against his side, warm where he was pressed up against Danny.

"Still waiting," Danny prompted, nearly ten minutes later, and Steve chuckled.

"You can't hurry this," he replied, quietly. "And believe me, you don't want to."

It was nearly eleven-thirty before Steve finally nudged Danny with his shoulder, nodding up at the sky.

"It's starting," he said, and Danny looked up.

For a second, he couldn't see anything. Then, the dark sky was cut with a streak of faint, white light. The streak was joined by another, and then another, each one brighter than the first, and then the sky was filled with the brilliant glow of a meteor shower.

"Well?" Steve prompted, when Danny was silent for several long moments.

"It's beautiful," Danny told him, and he could practically feel the force of Steve's happy grin. "I'm glad you dragged me out here."

"I'm glad you let me drag you," Steve told him, and Danny smiled, snuggling against his partner's side to enjoy the rest of the show. They sat in silence for almost an hour, watching the meteors streak across the sky, and then Danny felt Steve shift next to him.

"Make a wish," Steve told him, and Danny couldn't help the sappy grin that spread across his face.

"Mine already came true," he replied.


	8. Best Laid Plans

**Author's Note: **Sorry this wasn't posted on Monday, but I was completely laid out with a nasty cold.**  
><strong>

* * *

><p>Steve stared down at the flyer that Danny had handed him. "A wine tasting?" he said, skeptically. "Neither of us are really wine people, Danno."<p>

"Maybe I'm just trying to get you drunk so that I can have my way with you, later," Danny suggested, making Steve laugh.

"Still," Steve went on, "if that's your goal, there are infinitely easier way to go about it."

But, they went, and they tasted wines with unpronounceable names that Steve was sure had been made up on the spot, and they even enjoyed themselves. Up until one of the women at their table, there with a friend, because her husband was home sick with the flu, spotted her miraculously-healed better half two tables over – with his just-turned twenty-one year old girlfriend.

Two minutes later, when Steve was trying to convince the woman why simply divorcing the cheating bastard, and taking him for all he was worth, was infinitely better than stabbing him with a corkscrew, he glanced over at Danny.

"Next time," he informed his partner, "I get to pick.

* * *

><p>"No."<p>

"Oh, come on!"

"No. Absolutely not. Not in this lifetime."

"Danno-"

"Is it English that's the problem? Nyet, nein, 'a'ole. No."

"It'll be fun."

"I'm sorry, have we not met? I'm Danny; I enjoy action movies, walks on the beach, and _not taking headlong plunges off very tall cliffs_! Oh, don't look at me like that. Did Grace teach you that look?"

"Fine. But, this doesn't count. I still get to pick our next date."

"Agreed. But, no jumping off cliffs."

* * *

><p>"Steven, I assumed that when I said 'no jumping off cliffs', it would have been logically extended to jumping out of airplanes, as well."<p>

Steve shot his partner a pleading look. He hadn't really expected his parachuting proposal to go over well, but now that Danny had shot him down, he was determined to at least make a good go at it. For protest's sake, if nothing else.

"What about-" he started, but Danny cut him off before he could even finish.

"No bungee jumping," he said, curtly, as though he'd read Steve's mind.

Outwardly, Steve pouted. Inwardly, he was still plotting. One way or another, he would get Danny to agree on a date.

* * *

><p>"I cannot believe that I am actually considering this as a viable alternative to all the crazy dates you've proposed over the last week."<p>

"It's not cliff diving, or bungee jumping, or jumping out of airplanes-"

"Swimming. With. Sharks. Do you have a death wish, or something?"

"If I had a death wish, I'd just eat one of your frittatas. Ow! Mittens, really, Danny? You're pelting me with stuffed animals, now?"

"The stapler seemed too hard."

"Oh, come on, Danno. It'll be a blast. What do you say?"

"What do I say? I say you're insane, that's what I say."

"That wasn't actually a no-"

_*thudthudthud*_

"Danny, you're going to hurt yourself if you keep hitting your head on the desk like that."

* * *

><p>Danny sighed, leaning back against the passenger seat of the rental car. "I can't believe you talked me into taking a week of vacation for my birthday."<p>

"No, you're taking a week of well-deserved and much-needed vacation, and the fact that your birthday lands in the middle is simply coincidence," Steve pointed out.

"Uh huh," Danny agreed. "Nice rationalization. Where are we going, again?"

"Nice try," Steve chuckled, obeying the rental's GPS system when it told him to take a left. "I told you, you'll see when we get there."

"There's nothing to do down in this part of Seattle," Danny felt compelled to point out. "It's all warehouses and train tracks. The Space Needle is downtown."

"We're not going to the Space Needle," Steve told him. "Yet," he amended, a moment later, because he'd heard about a spinning restaurant at the top which would make for a great place to have dinner afterwards.

"Then where are we going?" Danny asked, persistently.

"You'll see," was all Steve would say.

Fifteen minutes later: "Can I open my eyes, now?"

"No," Steve answered, as he guided the car into the tight spot in the parking garage. "I don't want to ruin the surprise."

Danny sighed, but obediently kept his eyes closed, as Steve had requested. And he only made a token protest when Steve helped him out of the car and wrapped an arm around his waist to guide him through the crowds. They got a few, strange looks at the ticket booth, but no one really hassled them over their behavior, and Steve figured that the people who lived in Seattle saw weirder things every day.

The crowds inside the structure were thicker than Steve had expected, and difficult to navigate. And the stairs down to their seats were an obstacle he hadn't even thought about. But, they managed to get to their seats with a minimum of fuss, and Steve finally told Danny that he could open his eyes.

"This is a baseball stadium," Danny said, looking around.

"Safeco Field," Steve agreed. Handing over a program, he added, "Mariners versus-"

"Yankees," Danny finished for him, with a grin, reading the program. "You got me a baseball game for my birthday. Is this what all those crazy ideas were about, the last several weeks? Trying to throw me off my guard?"

"Yep," Steve replied. "Although, I still want to try cliff diving, at some point."

"Not on your life," Danny retorted, with a chuckle.

"Skydiving?" Steve suggested, hopefully, but he relented at an incredulous snort from Danny. "Oh, yeah," he added, digging into the backpack he'd brought with them. "Here."

Danny laughed at the pair of Yankees hats that Steve pulled out of the bag. "You realize we're in the wrong area, right?" he asked, looking around at the sea of navy blue Mariners gear that surrounded them, but he put his hat on with pride, anyway.

"That's the whole point," Steve told him, with a grin, donning his own Yankees hat with a flourish. "Hey, Danny? Happy birthday."


	9. Onipa'a, Pt 1

**Author's Note: **Another multi-chapter one. Unlike the last, I don't know how long this one is going to be, or even where it's going at this point. Should be a fun ride, no?

* * *

><p>Danny looked up from the paperwork littering his desk to see Steve hovering over him.<p>

"What's up?" he asked, and when Kono, overhearing him, snorted with laughter, he balled up a piece of paper and threw it at her head. "Get your mind out of the gutter. Both of you," he added, warningly, seeing a smirk on Steve's face.

"I still want to try dinner and a walk on the beach," Steve told him, perching his hip on the edge of Danny's desk. "Without being shot at, or chased by man-eating tigers-"

"Mittens was hardly a man-eater," Danny reminded him. "But, yeah, I think it's a good idea. Where do you want to go for dinner?"

"How does Italian sound?" Steve asked, and they made plans to meet at a small place just down the street. And as Danny watched Steve walk back to his office, he couldn't keep a smile off his face. It looked like they were finally going to get their nice date, after all.

* * *

><p>Danny carefully adjusted the knot in his tie, and from behind him, he heard Grace heave an exasperated sigh. Turning around, he met his daughter's impatient gaze as she looked him over.<p>

"What?" he asked, and Grace rolled her eyes, like she couldn't believe that he didn't already know.

"That's what you're wearing on your date with Uncle Steve?" she asked, and Danny automatically looked down at himself. Nice shirt, sharply-pressed slacks, good tie –

"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" he demanded, unable to see what had his daughter so mortally offended.

"Ties are for work, Danno," Grace informed him, matter-of-factly. "You don't wear a tie on a date."

"There's nothing wrong with wearing a tie on a date," Danny said, defensively, but Grace looked positively horrified.

"You don't wear the same clothes on a date that Uncle Steve saw you wearing at work," she insisted.

"So, lose the tie?" Danny asked, getting an emphatic nod in return.

"Lose the tie," Grace echoed. "And wear that dark gray shirt," she added, nodding at his closet. "That one's new, right?"

"Yeah, it's new," Danny confirmed.

Stepping inside his closet, he shed the blue shirt he currently had on and traded it for the gray one that Grace had indicated. She nodded her approval as he stepped out of the closet.

"Much better," she told him, happily. "Danno," she added, a note of hesitation in her voice, "you can drop me off at Leilani's house, before you go on your date."

Danny grinned at Grace, reaching out and pulling her into a hug. "If you think that I am giving up even a second with you," he told her, "especially a night we hadn't planned on-"

"You don't mind me coming to dinner with you and Uncle Steve?" Grace pressed, quietly.

"Steve insisted I bring you," Danny reassured her, "as soon as I told him that you were spending the weekend with me. I think he's got a special surprise lined up for you," he confided in Grace, who broke into a smile. "You ready to go?" he asked, and Grace nodded, eagerly.

* * *

><p>They were driving toward the restaurant when the car in front of them suddenly started fishtailing. Danny hit the brakes and yanked the wheel to the side to swerve out of the way of the car, pinning Grace to the seat with his arm to keep her from moving. The Camaro bumped onto the side of the road before coming to a stop, and Danny breathed a sigh of relief when he looked over and saw that Grace was shaken, but okay.<p>

"You all right, Monkey?" he asked, getting a quick nod in return.

"Danno, the other car," Grace said, urgently, and Danny looked out the windshield to see that the other car had slammed into a telephone pole, the front of the hood completely crumpled in at the point of impact.

"Stay here," Danny ordered, as he pulled his cell phone out and got out of the car. "Stay inside the car."

Grace nodded, murmuring a quiet assent as she hunkered down on the floor between the seat and the dashboard, her eyes barely peeking above the passenger window. Danny jogged across the street to the other car, pulling the driver's side door open and feeling for a pulse at the neck of the unconscious driver. He dialed nine-one-one, listening to the phone ring before an operator picked up.

"This is Detective Danny Williams," he said, without preamble. "I'm on Maunakea Street, and at the site of a one-car accident. Going to need an ambulance out here; one victim, the driver-"

He broke off at the sound of a groan from the man in the driver's seat, tucking the phone between his ear and his shoulder to better support the man as he shifted in his seat.

"Hey, buddy, take it easy," he said, soothingly. "You crashed your car, but you're going to be okay."

"Detective Williams" the man mumbled, his head lolling to the side as he tried to focus on Danny.

"Do I know you?" Danny asked, and the man opened his eyes, a strange smile coming over his face.

"No," he said, slowly, "but I know you."

Then, his eyes flickered to something over Danny's shoulder, and Danny instinctively turned to look. He caught a flash of something coming at his face, and he belatedly lifted an arm in automatic defense, but he didn't move fast enough. A heavy weight crashed into the side of his head, and the world went dark…


	10. Onipa'a, Pt 2

**Author's Note: **This one went somewhere I wasn't expecting it to. Still don't know where the whole thing is going.

* * *

><p>When the car in front of them started to swerve, Grace let out a yelp. Her father's arm shot out, pinning her back to her seat as he yanked the wheel, jerking their car off the road to keep from hitting the car in front of them. Their car bumped to a stop in the patch of grass alongside the road, and Grace let out a breath she hadn't been aware she'd been holding.<p>

"You all right, Monkey?" Danno asked, and Grace nodded, distractedly. Her attention was caught by the car that had been ahead of them, now wrapped around a telephone pole.

"Danno, the other car," she said, and she watched a look of concern flash across her father's face.

"Stay here," Danno told her, as he got out of the car, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. "Stay in the car."

Grace nodded, obediently hunkering down on the floor between the seat and the dashboard. She watched her father make his way across the street and over to the other car, pulling the door open. He had his phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder as he checked on the man driving the other car, and his mouth was moving like he was talking to someone. Grace hoped it was nine-one-one, or Uncle Steve.

Hearing the crunch of gravel from behind her, Grace peeked through the rear window of the car to see another car pulling to a stop behind them. A tall man with dark hair got out of the passenger side of the car, jogging across the street to where Danno was. Danno turned to look at the man standing behind him.

Then, Grace watched in horror as the man lifted his hand, holding a slim crowbar, and then he hit Danno over the head.

Grace's eyes went wide, her hands flying up to cover her mouth as she watched her father crumple to the pavement. There was blood slowly leaking from his head, where the man had hit him, onto the pavement, pooling beneath his face. Grace wanted to scream in horror, but she couldn't seem to make her voice work. She couldn't seem to make anything work, completely frozen where she was crouched in the car.

She watched as the man scooped Danno up off the ground, slinging her father over his shoulder like he was a bag of rice. The man who was in the crashed car got out, grabbing the crowbar that the second man had dropped on the ground after he'd hit Danno, as well as scooping up Danno's phone and putting it in his pocket. Then, they headed back to the car parked behind the one Grace was hiding in.

They disappeared out of her line of sight, and Grace shuddered at the thought of losing sight of her father. Before she knew what she was doing, she was crawling carefully into the backseat, peeking above the back dash to keep an eye on the men. She could faintly see them moving around at the back of their car, and it looked like one of them had opened the trunk. Then, there was the sound of slamming metal, and she knew that they'd just stuffed Danno into the trunk of the car.

Then, she heard something that made her suddenly go very, very cold.

"I'll get rid of his car," one of the men was saying, as he walked around the back of their car and headed up toward the Camaro.

Grace's heart raced in sheer terror. Her mind went completely blank as she listened to the man's slow footsteps on the pavement, watched his slow approach to her hiding place. Then, she thought she heard Uncle Steve's voice in her head.

_"Remember, Monkey," Steve was saying, "more important than getting away from someone trying to catch you, is to not let them catch you in the first place."_

_"What Uncle Steve is trying to say," Danno said, with a sigh, "is that you run. When you think you're in some kind of danger, you run as fast and as far as you can."_

_"And if they do catch me?" Grace asked, quietly, remembering how afraid she'd been when Danno's old partner had locked her in the storage shed. _

_"Then you bite, you kick, you scream," Steve told her, solemnly. "You do whatever you have to to get them to let go, until Danno and I can get there."_

_Grace nodded, wordlessly. "And then the bad guys better watch out, right?" she ventured, with a small smile. _

_"Right," Steve confirmed, reaching out and ruffling her hair. "Now, lesson one in kicking some ass…"_

Run. Uncle Steve's voice kept echoing in her head, and Grace reached out and carefully opened the back door. She half-climbed half-fell out of the car, landing hard on the pavement and scraping her elbow when she hit the ground. She bit back a whimper of pain as she crawled along the ground, staying low to keep out of sight.

In order to move the Camaro, the man would have to come around to the driver's side, which meant that she needed to get where he couldn't see her. Because if he or his partner did see her – Grace didn't know exactly what could happen, but she could certainly imagine, and she knew that it was going to be bad. She scurried along the side of the road to drop into a ditch, pressing against the rock-studded dirt as her chest heaved with exertion and fear.

She risked a quick peek over the edge of the ditch to see the man getting into Danno's car and starting the engine with the keys that were still in the ignition. The man drove away, and then his partner got into the car that he'd crashed, backing it up and pulling away from the telephone pole.

Once the men were gone, Grace clambered out of the ditch and ran back to their car. She headed back to the trunk, but when she tried the door, it didn't budge. The trunk was locked, and she couldn't see a key when she opened the driver's side door to look inside the car. Slamming the door shut in frustration, Grace ran back to the trunk, crouching down by the keyhole.

"Danno?" she whispered, waiting anxiously for the sound of her father's voice. "Daddy? Can you hear me?"

But, there was no answer, and Grace felt tears welling up in her eyes at the thought of her father lying dead inside the trunk.

"Danno, please," she pleaded.

She wished, desperately, that the men had left Danno's phone lying on the ground. A second later, she remembered her own cell phone, but when she pulled it out of her pocket, the screen was cracked clear through the middle, and it wouldn't turn on when she pressed the button. She'd probably broken it falling out of the car.

"No, no, no-" Grace moaned, feeling panic beginning to set in.

Then, she heard the sound of footsteps in the distance, gravel sliding roughly across the road, and she was running back to the ditch and jumping down inside before she even knew what she was doing. She landed wrong, her ankle twisting underneath her, and she bit down hard on her tongue to keep from crying out.

The first man was back, the one who'd driven off in their car, and he walked back to the trunk, thumping on the metal with a heavy fist.

"Still living in there?" he asked, laughing cruelly when his action produced a soft groan. Grace barely heard it, but it was enough to tell her that Danno was still alive. Badly hurt, but alive.

She watched as the man climbed into the driver's seat, drumming his hands on his knees as he waited for his partner. Several minutes passed with agonizing slowness, and then a cell phone rang with a shrill sound that made Grace jump. She watched as the man checked the ringing phone, and then he slammed the phone down on the dashboard without answering it, rolling down the window and throwing the phone into the ditch.

Grace hunched over as she crawled to where the phone had landed, blinking back tears when she picked up Danno's now-broken phone. Two cell phones, and she still had no way to call for help. She crawled back to her vantage point to spy on the man, again, to see him talking on his own cell phone.

"-yeah, I dumped the car a few blocks away," he was saying. "Stripped the stereo out, made it look like a jacking." The man was silent for a moment, listening to whoever was on the other side, and then he scowled. "Yes, I wiped down the car. What do you take me for, an idiot? Look, where the hell are you? I'll come pick you up, and then we can start on the cop."

_'Repeat what he says,'_ Grace chanted to herself, as she and the man both waited for an answer. _'Please, please repeat what he says to you.'_

But, clearly the men who'd hurt Danno were smarter than the villains in the movies, because the man just grunted after he heard his partner's reply, clicking off his phone and throwing it onto the seat beside him. Then, he started the car, gunned the engine, and roared off down the street.

_'I need to get help,'_ Grace thought, as she scrambled out of the ditch and stared after the departing car. _'I need Uncle Steve.'_

She thought for a second about waiting and flagging down a passing car, but none had come along the road since the accident, and Grace had a sinking suspicion she wasn't going to see anything. Besides, she – and Danno – couldn't afford to wait. The restaurant was just a few streets over, she thought. And she knew Uncle Steve was going to be there.

_'Hang on, Danno,'_ she thought, determinedly, as she began to run. _'Me and Uncle Steve are going to find you.'_


	11. Onipa'a, Pt 3

**Author's Note: **Okay, I've got a confession. I honestly have no idea where this story is going, and I'm making this up as I go along. Thanks for sticking with me, anyway.

* * *

><p>Steve glanced at his watch for the third time in ten minutes, and then over at the front door to the restaurant. He bit back a sigh when Danny and Grace refused to just magically appear out of thin air.<p>

_'Come on, Danny,'_ he thought, as he resisted the urge to check his watch for a fourth time.

For a brief nanosecond, he wondered if he'd been stood up, but he dismissed the idea just as quickly as it had occurred to him. There was no way that Danny was standing him up. Absolutely no way.

He lasted another ten minutes before he pulled his cell phone out, hitting one on his speed dial for Danny's number, and listening to the phone ring. Four rings, and it switched over to voicemail, and his dug his nails into his palm in frustration.

_"This is Danny, leave a message."_ The curt message, so at odds with his partner's usual verbosity, usually never failed to make Steve smile. But now, with a faint thread of worry gnawing at his gut, he couldn't even work up a tiny smirk.

"Hey, Danny," he said, trying to keep the worry out of his voice, "just wondering if you'd checked your watch, lately. That's all. I'm waiting for you and Grace-" and there was nothing to add after that that didn't just make him sound pathetic – "I'll see you when you get here, okay?"

Hanging up the phone, he glanced back down at his watch. Twelve minutes. He waved off the waiter who was hovering near his table again, ignoring the man's impatient eye roll, and went back to staring determinedly at the door.

_'Come on, Danny.'_

Another ten minutes, and he was about to call Danny again – and considering calling out the cavalry – when he heard an enraged shriek coming from the front of the restaurant. He stood up, moving through the other diners crowded in front of him, pushing through the crowd faster when he thought he heard his name.

"Uncle Steve!"

"Grace?" Steve muttered, elbowing a couple of rubberneckers aside just in time to see the front-door host swing Grace up into his arms as she tried to break past him, clamping a hand over her mouth to stop her from screaming, again.

Then, he watched as Grace promptly sunk her teeth into the hand held over her mouth. Even as the man howled in pain, jerking his hand away, Grace had driver her foot straight back into his crotch. The man dropped her, and Grace fell heavily to the floor, scrambling up to her feet and sprinting across the distance that separated them, to throw herself into his arms. Steve had a moment to take in the fact that she was limping, even though she hadn't laded that hard, before he was sweeping Grace up into his arms.

"Grace, what-" he started, but the little girl cut him off before he could say anything else.

"We were driving – and there was another car – he hit the telephone pole, but he wasn't really hurt – and they had a crowbar, and they've got him –"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Steve interrupted the frantic tirade pouring out of Grace's mouth, absently noting that she had definitely inherited her father's gift of gab. "Slow down, Gracie. Take a breath. What happened? Where's Danny?"

Grace took a deep breath, her chest heaving with the effort. She took another, clearly trying to calm herself down, locking her eyes with Steve's.

"They've got him, Uncle Steve," she said, somberly, her next words chilling him to the bone. "The bad men have my Danno."

* * *

><p>Danny regained consciousness, slowly. And when he managed to peel his eyes open, he almost wished that he hadn't.<p>

It was dark, but not so dark that he couldn't see some of where he was. And what he could see wasn't reassuring. As far as he could tell, he was being held in some kind of warehouse, surrounded by dirt, grime, and shipping pallets stacked almost to the ceiling. He craned his head around to take in as much of his surroundings as he could, gritting his teeth against the shooting pain in his shoulders that the movement produced.

The pain helped, slightly, because with it came the realization that he was actually having trouble feeling his arms. He shifted trying to regain sensation in his arms, only for the shooting pain to turn into a low burn of agony.

_'Hanging by my wrists,'_ he realized, glancing up toward the ceiling to confirm his suspicions.

And, yep, he was suspended from the ceiling by a thick chain, heavy manacles wrapped around his wrists. Letting his head fall forward, he stared at the ground, where his toes barely brushed the filthy concrete, meaning that his shoulders were bearing all of his weight. No wonder he'd lost feeling in his arms while he'd been unconscious.

He couldn't figure out why it had taken him so long to come to that realization, but his head felt fuzzy and he thought that it might have something to do with that. He couldn't remember what had happened to make him so fuzzy, how he'd wound up in a filthy, and clearly abandoned, warehouse out in God-only-knew-where.

_'Were we on a case?'_ he thought, as he looked around the warehouse, trying to get a clue as to his bearings. He moved carefully to avoid agitating his shoulders even more than they already were.

He remembered being at work, remembered talking to Steve about dinner plans, but there was nothing after that. Just one, big, terrifying blank. He assumed that they'd been called out on a case –

_'No,'_ Danny thought, stopping that train of thought before it could even get started. _'I can't afford to assume anything. Not without proof.'_

But there was no proof of anything. Which meant that he was back at blank nothingness, again. And that was almost more terrifying than knowing for sure what had happened.

_'What if we weren't on a case?'_ he couldn't help thinking. _'What if I was alone when I was attacked, what if no one knows I'm out here? What if they don't even know I'm missing?'_

That made him go cold, the thought that no one was looking for him. He didn't know how long he'd been tied up in that warehouse, but if it had only been a short while, it was entirely possible that no one knew he was gone. And if they didn't know that he was missing, he could be dead before anyone even thought to look for him.

The sound of a door slamming open dragged him out of his thoughts before he could spiral down into panic. He looked in the direction of the sound, squinting through the faint streaks of sunlight coming from the open door, to see a figure picking his way carefully across the debris littering the floor.

"This place is utterly disgusting, don't you think?" The figure turned out to be a man wearing a very expensive suit that probably cost more than Danny made in a year. "Honestly, I've never understood the appeal of these places, but they have their uses, I suppose."

"Like holding a cop prisoner?" Danny croaked out, and a cold smile spread across the man's face.

"Exactly," he agreed, a false cheerfulness in his voice. "Detective Williams, I'm so glad you decided to rejoin us in the land of the living."

"Who are you?" Danny demanded, watching a small frown crease the man's handsome face.

"You don't remember me?" he said, one hand drifting up to clutch dramatically at his heart. A silver ring with a blood-red ruby glinted on his ring finger. "Detective, I'm hurt." Raising his voice, he called out, "He doesn't remember me!"

At the sound of the man's voice, a pair of hulking figures detached themselves from the shadows to stand beside the man. They both looked vaguely familiar, and Danny wracked his brain, trying to place one or both of them.

"How hard did you hit him, anyway?" the first man demanded, oblivious to Danny's silent turmoil. "I told you to knock him out, not splatter his brains all over the pavement."

"I just gave him a little love tap," one of the Hulks said, jerking his shoulder in a shrug. "Only took one to knock him out; he went down like a sack of bricks."

He swung his fist through the air, miming hitting Danny in the head with an overly-exaggerated gesture. His partner laughed, a cold, cruel sound, and the sound knocked something loose in Danny's mind. Dinner plans, driving to the restaurant, the car accident – Grace!

"Where the hell is my daughter?" he demanded, hoarsely, getting a surprised look from the first man. "What did you do with my daughter, you son of a bitch?"

"What daughter?" the man asked, obviously perplexed. Turning on the hulks, he snapped, "You told me he was alone."

"He was!" Hulk number two blustered, his eyes flicking quickly between Danny and the man. "There was no one else around, I swear."

"Well, clearly there was," the man bit off, his eyes flashing with a barely-restrained fury. "And clearly you need to find her, before she goes to the authorities."

"No!" Danny yelled, as his mind went temporarily blank with terror. They hadn't known about Grace, and he'd just put her life in danger with his own carelessness… "NO!"

"Oh, don't worry, Detective," the first man said, in a patronizing tone. "We're going to take good care of your little girl. I promise."

He patted Danny on the cheek, jerking his hand back, hastily, when Danny whipped his head around to try and sink his teeth into the man's fingers. Then, he strode out of the warehouse with the Hulks trailing behind him. The sound of his cold, high laughter bounced off the metal walls.

"Don't you touch her!" Danny screamed at the man's departing back. "Don't you fucking touch her! I'll kill you!"

His only answer was the sound of the heavy metal door slamming shut, leaving him trapped alone in the darkness.


	12. Onipa'a, Pt 4

**Author's Note: **Bit of a slow chapter this time, but I promise to make it up to you, next chapter.

* * *

><p>Steve drove in a terse silence to the scene of Danny's kidnapping. In the seat beside him, Grace was equally silent, an unusually somber look on her face as she stared out of the windshield. Steve was tempted to suggest getting her somewhere safe, again, but the last time he'd mentioned it, Grace had fixed him with one of her father's steely-eyed glares as she crossed her arms.<p>

"I'm not going anywhere, Uncle Steve," she'd informed him, curtly. "I'm the only one who knows what those men look like, and every second that we spend arguing is another second that Danno is with the bad guys."

She'd sounded eerily like her father in that moment, and Steve pitied Danny when Grace got older. As much as he hadn't liked it, though, Grace had been right. There was no time to get her to safety, and she knew what Danny's kidnappers looked like. So, she was sitting stiffly in the front seat of his truck, wearing his spare Kevlar vest, and clutching his Taser like a particularly macabre teddy bear.

He'd taken a few, precious seconds to show her how to use the non-lethal device, reasoning in all good conscience that he couldn't hand a loaded weapon to a ten-year-old, but he didn't want to leave her undefended. So, Taser. If he was lucky, Danny wouldn't yell too loudly when he found out.

_'Actually, if I'm lucky,'_ Steve thought, clutching the steering wheel tighter as he picked up the speed, _'if I'm really, really lucky, Danny will still be alive to yell at me about this.'_

He pulled to a stop at the scene of the "accident", surveying the road with a critical eye. There were skid marks on the road that ended abruptly in the grass in front of the telephone pole. It looked like the driver had braked hard before hitting the telephone pole, and Steve guessed that he'd been trying to minimize the damage done, while making things look worse than they really were.

Getting out of the truck, Steve walked over to the telephone pole, pulling on a pair of gloves as he walked. Grace jogged up to his side, the Kevlar vest hanging overly-large on her small frame.

"This is where they crashed their first car," she told him, quietly. "Danno stopped to help, and the driver hit him over the head with a crowbar."

"Where?" Steve asked, and Grace frowned down at the ground, moving slowly across the asphalt until she stopped at a spot.

"Here," she told Steve. "I think that's Daddy's blood," she added, in a small voice.

"It's going to be okay," Steve reassured her, as he crossed to her side. "I promise."

Grace nodded, but the look in her eyes told him that she wasn't convinced. She didn't say anything, but Steve knew that she was smart enough to know that some promises just couldn't be kept. She didn't call him on it, though, and for that he was grateful.

Crouching down, Steve took a closer look at the bloodstain on the pavement. There wasn't a lot of blood, thankfully, which meant that, whoever had taken Danny, they'd been trying to incapacitate him, not kill him. Now, he just had to find out who "they" were.

"Grace," Steve asked, as he stood up, "do you remember what either of those cars looked like? The one they crashed, and the one they took Danny away in?"

"I think so," Grace said, her voice steady with only the slightest quaver. "And, I think I remember what the men looked like, too."

"Good job, Monkey," he told her, and a small smile flitted across her face when he used Danny's nickname for her. "All right, I'm going to get you on the phone with Chin and Kono, and you can tell them everything you know, okay? The sooner we find these guys, the better."

"Yeah," Grace agreed, nodding. "Okay, Uncle Steve."

Setting Grace up in the truck with his cell phone, Steve prowled around the crime scene. He collected evidence from everything he found, no matter how minor. He wasn't going to take the chance that missing even a scrap kept them from finding Danny.

Fifteen minutes later, Grace waved him over, passing him the phone and curling up against the seat. Steve squeezed her hand, reassuringly, as he took the phone.

"Chin, did you get what you need?" he asked, without preamble.

"And more," Chin replied. "Grace has a good eye, and an even better memory. I've got license plates on both vehicles – naturally, both were reported stolen recently."

"Clearly, we're not dealing with amateurs," Steve commented. "Anything else?"

"Preliminary descriptions of both men." Kono came on the line, probably speaking over Chin's shoulder. "I'm running them through the database, but so far we haven't had any hits."

"Keep me informed on anything you find," Steve said.

"Will do, Boss," Kono agreed. "Do you want us to come out there?"

"Not yet," Steve replied. "I think we'll get more done with you and Chin working things back at headquarters."

Hanging up the phone, he turned to see Grace watching him, an exhausted look on her young face. She had her hands wrapped protectively around her ankle, and Steve remembered her limping on that leg earlier when she'd come to find him at the restaurant.

"What happened to your leg, Gracie?" he asked, softly, and she looked down at the limb in surprise, as though she'd forgotten that it was injured.

"I stumbled when I jumped down into the ditch," she finally answered, nodding at the deep trench on the side of the road. "It kind of hurts."

"Let me take a look," Steve said, and Grace obliged, stretching her leg out on the seat in front of her.

Steve untied her sneaker and eased the shoe off her foot. Her ankle was slightly swollen, but pressure from her shoe had kept the inflammation down to a manageable level. Digging under the seat, Steve produced his first aid kit and wrapped Grace's ankle with the stretchy, fabric bandage. Grace watched him with an interested look on her face, poking carefully at the bandage when he was done.

"It doesn't hurt as much as it did," she said, as she put her shoe back on and did up the laces. "Thanks, Uncle Steve."

"Anytime, Monkey," Steve said, ruffling Grace's hair. "Come on. Let's go find your dad."


	13. Onipa'a, Pt 5

**Author's Note:** Okay, this chapter took an interesting (and dark) turn, that even I wasn't expecting. There's some dark imagery ahead, but I tried to keep it from getting too graphic.

* * *

><p>Danny floated in the darkness. His arms and back burned with a slow agony; he was pretty certain that he'd dislocated his right shoulder testing the limits of his bindings. The most he'd been able to do was send himself swaying on the end of the chain suspending him from the ceiling, his toes dragging along the concrete. And it was literally his toes; his captors had taken his boots, probably to keep him from getting too far away if, by some chance, he'd been able to get out of his bindings.<p>

He still didn't know how long he'd been tied up. In the darkness, without a way to see his watch, he had no way to determine how much time had passed. He was estimating at least an hour, but that didn't take into account how long he'd been unconscious the first time, and he'd given up counting the seconds after about fifteen minutes.

He couldn't stop thinking about Grace. If she was safe, if the Hulk twins had found her – the thought of his daughter being in danger made his stomach churn, wildly.

_'She's fine,'_ Danny told himself, firmly, refusing to even entertain any other possibility. _'She has to be. She __**has**__ to be.'_

His musing was interrupted by the sound of the warehouse door scraping open across the concrete. Danny automatically tensed up at the sound, narrowing his eyes as he stared at the approaching figure. It turned out to be his main captor, rather than one of the Hulks.

"I'm so glad to see that you're back with us, Detective," the man said, in a syrupy voice. "Did you have a nice nap?"

"Go to hell," Danny snapped, and the man shook his head, tsking sadly.

"After all the time we spent together," he said, mournfully, "this is all you have to say to me?"

"All the time we spent together?" Danny echoed, incredulously. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm going to have to kill Higgins," the man mused, rather than answering him, "if he managed to hit you hard enough to actually induce amnesia."

"Higgins?" Danny repeated, and the man smirked at him.

"Not his real name, of course," he replied. "Honestly, Detective, how stupid do you think I am? No, wait, I don't think I want to hear your answer to that one." Stepping back, he studied Danny with a hurt expression on his face. "You honestly don't know who I am?"

"Not a clue," Danny barked. Actually, the more the man talked, the more his voice sounded familiar, but Danny wasn't about to tell him that.

The man sighed, theatrically. "Well, then," he remarked, perhaps this will jog your memory."

Then, to Danny's amazement and horror, the man grabbed the front of his shirt, pulled him forward, and kissed him, deeply. Danny tried to throw himself backward, moving as much as he could in his restraints, but the man's grip was too strong, and he couldn't escape his iron grip. Then, the man moved his mouth on Danny's, and a puckered scar on the side of his mouth brushed against Danny's skin, and he completely froze.

In an instant, he wasn't hanging from a chain in an abandoned warehouse in Honolulu. He was back in New Jersey, on his first week of the job, replying to a domestic abuse call. He and his partner had just arrested the husband, and his partner had cuffed the man and was escorting him down to their squad car. Danny had just finished taking the wife's statement, and was headed back down the hallway, when he heard a crashing sound coming from behind an apartment door.

_"Hello?" Danny called, undoing the snap on his gun holster as he rapped briskly on the door. "Is someone in trouble in there?"_

_There was another, fainter crashing sound, followed by something that might have been a voice calling out. He couldn't be sure. _

_"This is the police," he called out, again. "If you can hear me, I'm coming in there."_

_If his partner had been there, his fellow rookie, as impulsive as Danny was cautious, would have kicked in the door in true action-hero style. Danny instead tried the doorknob, the door opening easily under his hand. In later years, Danny would come to see this as the moment when he first screwed up. _

_He slowly entered the apartment, his hand hovering over his weapon. He hadn't yet pulled the gun out (second mistake), not wanting to pull a weapon on someone who'd simply slipped and fallen on the kitchen floor. The apartment had looked fine, no furniture overturned, no obvious signs that some kind of a struggle had taken place. _

_"Police, is someone there?" Danny called out, again, moving cautiously through the apartment. _

_He heard a weak groan, and then a voice whimpered, "Back here."_

_Following the sound of the voice, Danny entered a bedroom at the back of the apartment. He couldn't see anyone in the room, and so he stepped inside the bedroom. His back was to the walk-in closet as he entered (third mistake), and he didn't see the figure that jumped out at him. _

_His first clue that he wasn't alone was the slim arm that wrapped around his throat, cutting off his air. He clawed desperately at the arm around his throat, his gun falling from his limp fingers to land on the thick carpet with a muffled thump. Then, he felt a tiny pinprick on the side of his neck, and the world disappeared into darkness. _

_It took his partner, and the rest of the department, two days to find him. Two days, in which Danny sunk into a living hell that he didn't think he would ever escape from. He was never fully conscious during his captivity; his captor kept him sufficiently drugged that he was never able to form a coherent picture of the man. _

_He didn't really remember what happened to him during his two days of captivity. He knew that he'd been hurt, badly enough that his partner had gotten violently sick when he first entered the room, badly enough that he'd died twice in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and had to be revived. He'd been told, later, that he'd been in surgery for almost six hours to save his life, and he'd spent almost two months on desk duty until he'd recovered. _

_But, he still had no concrete memories of that time. He supposed that was something to be grateful for. _

_What he did remember was pain. Utterly blinding pain, as his captor sliced his body to ribbons. Hands where they'd had no business being. A dark, cruel laugh that sent shivers down his skin. And that scarred mouth, on him, kissing him…_

Danny jerked himself out of the painful memories with a hoarse cry. His captor was standing in front of him, a small smile on his face.

"Back with me, now, Detective?" the man crooned, in a sing-song voice. "Detective. You've come such a long way since I've known you last, haven't you, Danny Boy?"

"Stop," Danny whispered, his voice emerging in barely more than a croak. "Stop it."

"You were so young, so naive," the man went on, as if Danny hadn't even spoken. "So beautiful. Time has only made you even more so, you know."

"Don't touch me," Danny snapped, jerking his head back when the man reached out to caress his cheek.

"Don't be like that," the man scolded him, lightly. "You can't tell me that you haven't missed me, that you haven't spent every night since our last, dreaming of me."

"No," Danny rasped out, painfully, and it wasn't completely a lie.

The dreams didn't come every night, not any more. But when they came, he woke himself up with the screams. He'd just been lucky, so far, that he hadn't had any nightmares on Grace's nights, or during the time he spent bunking on Steve's couch.

"Don't lie to me," the man said, tapping him gently on the cheek. "I can see the truth in your eyes. They're the windows to the soul, you know, and yours are wide open. I can see everything in your eyes."

_"You have such beautiful eyes," the man whispered to him, running a hand down his chest. Danny weakly struggled to get away, the ropes tying him to the bed tightening around his wrists. "Such beautiful eyes."_

Danny shuddered out of the memory only to be thrust into a waking nightmare. His captor had his hand fisted in Danny's short hair, pulling his head back at a painful angle, mouth covering his in a hard kiss. He couldn't move away, could only sit there and endure until the man was done. When the man finally pulled away, Danny spit at him, the glob coming out red, and he realized that he must have bitten his tongue.

The man was unbothered by his actions, simply wiping the spit off his cheek with an elegantly manicured finger.

"We're going to have so much fun, you and I," the man told him, smiling as he rolled up the sleeves of his elegant shirt. "So much fun."

Danny had never been more terrified in his life.


	14. Onipa'a, Pt 6

**Author's Note:** Holy monkeys, an actual update!

Seriously, thank you guys so much for sticking with me for this long. I never meant to go so long with this fic, but then I never intended this one to go the way it did, and it went to a pretty dark place in the last chapter. I needed to take a bit of a break, and then life and everything else completely caught up with me.

Again, thank you so much for your patience. I promise, it will be rewarded, and Danny will get out of this. Eventually.

* * *

><p>Steve scowled at the glass littering the street around Danny's Camaro. His kidnappers had been good, smashing the windows and yanking the stereo out of the dashboard, making it look like the car had been stripped and abandoned after a joyride.<p>

Unfortunately for them, Steve was better.

There were no fingerprints; the men had been smart enough to wipe down everything they'd touched. What they hadn't been smart enough to do, though, was remember to take the cloth they'd used to wipe down the car.

"Uncle Steve!" Grace hollered, from where she was sitting in the truck, and he jogged over to her.

She was cradling the portable fingerprint scanner in her lap, her eyes glued to his laptop screen. Steve hadn't been holding out much hope for anything useful from the cloth he'd found in Danny's car, the fingerprint he'd found had only been a partial, but he'd run it, nonetheless. And they'd hit on a match.

"Good job, Monkey," he told Grace, who gave him a small smile. Dialing his phone, he drummed his fingers impatiently while he waited for Chin to pick up. "Chin, I need you to run a name for me. Ben Kahale."

"Thug for hire." Chin came back after about ten minutes, his voice grim. "Kahale is a mercenary who works for the highest bidder."

"Any chance he's been to New Jersey?" Steve asked, his hopes dashed at Chin's next words.

"He's never left the island, and I can't find any evidence of him being involved with any cases that Danny's worked on" Chin told him. "This isn't some kind of vendetta for him. If he snatched Danny, it's because someone paid him to do it."

"I don't suppose you can figure out who paid him?" Steve asked. "Or, who he might have been working with? Grace said there were two men."

"Working on it," Chin replied. "You will be happy to know that Kahale matches one of the descriptions that Grace gave us. And if we can find the other one-"

"Keep me informed," Steve said.

Hanging up, he glanced over at Grace. The girl was staring anxiously out the window at the wreck of her father's car, her hands clenched into fists.

"I'm scared," she whispered, glancing over at him. "What if we can't get Danno back?"

"We will," Steve said, firmly, squashing down the same fear that kept nagging at him. They _had_ to find Danny. There was no other option. "We are going to find Danno, Grace. I promise."

Then, he dialed Danny's old precinct in New Jersey. It was still entirely possible that this whole thing was a local affair, but Danny had made a lot of enemies in his old life, and Steve wasn't willing to count anything out.

* * *

><p>The next time Danny regained consciousness, he was lying on a bed. Looking to either side revealed that he was still in the warehouse, which meant his captor had to have brought the bed in. His arms were stretched over his head, secured to the bed frame, and his ankles were tied to either side of the bed, spreading his legs apart. He was still dressed, but he knew his captor preferred having his "fun" when he was conscious and able to react.<p>

Danny pulled at the bindings on his wrists, testing. Instead of the chains that had held him before, he was tied up with some kind of rope. And, unlike last time he'd found himself in this kind of situation, he was completely clear-headed. So, either his captor was overconfident and underestimating him, or he had other plans.

It was the thought of those "other plans" that made a cold shiver run down his back.

And speak of the devil… Danny turned his head at the sound of the heavy door being dragged open, squinting in the bright sunlight that flooded the empty space. And the creator of his personal hell strode into the warehouse.

Antony Chambers. Danny didn't remember the first time he met the man who'd become so utterly obsessed with him. He might have bumped into him on the street, or stood in front of him in line at the grocery store. It might have even been something as simple as Chambers seeing him across the room. But whatever it was, it had clearly been more than enough for Chambers.

Chambers was supposed to still be in prison, though. Danny had still been hospitalized at the time of his trial, but he'd found out later that Chambers had been sentenced to seventy-five years, with no possibility of parole. Obviously, something had changed.

"So glad you're back with me, Danny Boy," Chambers crooned, in a thoroughly unsettling tone. He sat down on the edge of the bed beside Danny, a creepy smile gracing his features. "How are you feeling?"

"Untie me, and I'll be more than happy to give you an answer," Danny said, struggling to keep his voice even.

"I don't think that's necessary," Chambers said, still leering down at him.

"How are you out of prison?" Danny asked, getting a smirk from his captor.

"Good behavior," Chambers told him. "Well, that, and overcrowding in the prisons. The judge figured that since you were no longer in the state, I wasn't a danger to anyone. Especially since I promised to stay in New Jersey."

"And he just took you at your word?" Danny demanded.

"I can be very persuasive," Chambers said.

"What do you want with me?" Danny asked.

Chambers looked at him as if he thought the answer should be obvious. "I want you to stay with me," he said, the dreamy tone of his voice making Danny shudder. "Forever."

"And it never occurred to you to simply ask?" Danny pressed, stalling for time from whatever Chambers had planned for him.

"And give you the opportunity to say no?" Chambers asked. "No, Daniel, I've been disappointed by so many, before; I didn't want you to disappoint me, as well." The somber expression on his face disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and Chambers bounced to his feet. "I want to have some fun. Don't you want to have fun, Danny Boy?"

Danny knew better than to bait the dangerous sociopath. That was Steve's thing, not his. But he was hurt, and he was angry, and his partner's words just seemed to float out of his mouth.

"Sorry to _disappoint_," he spit out, "but I actually have other plans."

Chambers' eyes flared dangerously at his words, and he glared down at Danny. He was practically shaking with rage.

"You're mine," he growled. "You're supposed to want to be with _me_. Forever!"

Danny defiantly shook his head. "Forever's already spoken for," he told the other man.

He never saw the knife appear in Chambers' hand. But he certainly felt the blade as it sliced neatly through cloth, and the skin below, a line of blood welling up on his chest. Danny didn't even bother holding back a yell, praying there was someone, anyone, out there who could hear him.

"You're mine," Chambers snarled, making another cut on Danny's chest, his eyes flashing with rage. "You're mine, you're mine-"

Danny closed his eyes and clung to the ropes binding him to the bed. His chest was awash in pain, and he'd lost any chance of reasoning with Chambers.

And he was well and totally screwed.


End file.
